Month: June 2011

Reading Time: 3 minutesTwo days ago speculation that the governor of the Central Bank of Uganda was going to resign sent the shilling, already free falling, careening towards a new low. These are bad days for Governor Mutebile and bad days for the shilling. Earlier in an interview with the Financial Times, he called his boss President Yoweri

Reading Time: 2 minutesGreek Gods are angry with Athens and apparently with Kampala too. As the Greek economy sees red ( a color as children we were warned not to wear during rainstorms), Jupiter or Zeus from high smote dead 21 , mostly children injuring many others. The attacks happened in Kiryandondo, a bucolic part of the Ugandan

Reading Time: 2 minutesAndrew Mwenda, who is the editor of the Independent magazine makes a passionate but ultimately flawedargument about the role of journalism in holding public officers accountable and keeping their projects honest in a recent column for his news magazine. Many Ugandan journalists will recognise that he rather belatedly agrees with President Yoweri Museveni’s refrain on

Reading Time: 2 minutesAs many journalists reported Tullow Uganda’s appointment of a national as its chief operating officer (thus going a step further in Ugandanizing its operations), a story run in the BBC that this innovative wild cat with ambitions of becoming the next British Petroleum had launched a “Invest in Africa” drive. This sponsorship was not promoted

Reading Time: 5 minutesThe dry season in Moyo, in West Nile, Uganda can be scotching. When I was growing up during the monsoon, winds that arrive here having crossed the dessert overnight through the leafy parts of South Sudan and over the mountain range that separates the two countries camp in wintry conditions at the town. It was

Reading Time: 4 minutesI am half way through my rabies vaccine treatment. It is administered generally over three weeks. Every shot, injected on the soft part of the arm, just below the shoulder (usually on the left if you are right handed) costs slightly over 200 dollars. That is more than my sister makes monthly as a customer

Reading Time: 3 minutesA good friend pointed out Lauren Jenkins post in Think Progress in which she argued that proposals by Representative Donald Payne that the Obama administration give the South Sudan army air defense systems would likely boomerang on the humanitarian activities of the United Nations. According to Jenkins in the past the Khartoum regime , which

Reading Time: 3 minutesI meant to write today about how aid and humanitarianism have marooned Africa in an island of daring where only “development experts” and badass multinational corperations risk going, but Libya and the Canucks kept blowing hot and cold over my twitter feed the whole day. There is some movement in Libya. Mrs Hilary Clinton, the

Reading Time: 6 minutesBelow is the statement by Uganda’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations ( now a cabinet minister for ICT as well) on the Security Council dialogue. As posted here earlier a lot more angst is felt by African governments over Libya understandably because of their ties to the regime on one hand and the fear

Reading Time: 3 minutes“If we must do Afrikaans Vorster must do Zulu” the placards declared as students, many just teenagers, took to the streets of Soweto to oppose the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of teaching in South Africa. It was June 16th the day of the march is now Youth Day in South Africa and Day